Temptation

The world tempts us with everything
and the temptation most difficult to resist is self.

Taste

Each treat, every sustenance, must disappear from our sight before we can taste it.

Teases

Dream teases cognition without self.

Concentration

There is what concentrates and there is what is being concentrated, but what concentrates is also being concentrated.

Non-being

We long for non-being, but we want to come to—and depart from!—it as beings.

New poems

+13

What makes you feel

What makes you feel large makes you feel real.
What makes you feel small makes you feel true.

Unjust

The world is unjust to the degree that the world condemns and punishes us for the actions of those we decry and deny. Without agency, there is no responsibility; without responsibility, no culpability; without culpability, no just consequence.

Poetry

Poetry is the true text of the existentialist.

Every dream

Every dream changes
every other dream.

Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers

I received my (complimentary!) copy of Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers, edited by David Lehman, which contains some of my work, including "At The Polls." I highly recommend that everyone pick up a copy of this compendium of some of the fun that goes on weekly at The American Scholar website!

New poems

+15

Rest (Sterne)

Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.

Laurence Sterne

Until

We are born continually
until we are not.

Exult!

Exult, don't exalt.

This rhythm (Prescott)

Strong and unrestrained emotion expresses itself in waves, with a throbbing or pulsation, in recurrent movements appearing in voice and gesture, which constitute a natural rhythm. Poetry, an emotional expression, has this rhythm. The beat of a passage of poetry or impassioned prose is not a superadded ornament, but an inevitable and vital accompaniment of such expression, going back, we may imagine, for its origin to the poet's heart.

F. C. Prescott, Poetry and Dreams

An amazing life

Stephen Hawking
8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018

Thrown away

What people throw away should be lost,
shouldn't linger.

New poems

+15

For

I read for the world;
I write for myself.

On poetry

Poetry is selection, not creation.

A great pile (Thoreau)

We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.

Henry David Thoreau

For having had (Briscoe)

The flip side of grief is gratitude for having had whatever is lost to begin with.

Susan Briscoe

Deep

Depth is not attained by learning to be content in the shallows.

Silver & gold

Silver, what can be used for one's own purposes,
and gold, what can reveal what one's purposes are.

Ecstasy (Levertov)

A religious devotion to the truth, to the splendor of the authentic, involves the writer in a process rewarding in itself; but when that devotion brings us to undreamed abysses and we find ourselves sailing slowly over them and landing on the other side—that's ecstasy.

Denise Levertov

New poems

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Taking

I take what I need from everything, but I need more than I can take, more than there is to take, too often.

Or (Plath)

I like people too much or not at all.

Sylvia Plath

The ending

The human innovation was the ending.

The belabored

The belabored becomes the beloved.